Page 48 of Whiskers on Kittens

“Then I guess you’ll just have to install a basement lair for me at your dime since you are expecting me to do your dirty work.”

“You’re ruthless.”

“When I have to be, yes. I’m also fine with connecting two of the suites in the current basement. Is their housing arrangement suitable for their kittens?”

“Their current home is plenty spacious for the litter. They aren’t wealthy but they aren’t poor. They’ll be fine on that front. But it would be convenient to simply have everyone over at your place on Christmas Eve.”

I could work with convenient. “I’ll leave you with making the arrangements to have them arrive shortly before we bring their kittens home.”

“Not after?”

“They can watch out the window in stunned astonishment while we herd them in, which will give them a few minutes to get over the initial shock.” I gave the papers in front of me a loving pat. “It seems you have a lot of work to do, so you should just get on that while we start handling these papers.”

“We’ll be back in time for lunch,” the succubus promised before she grabbed hold of Lucifer and they both disappeared. Several pops announced the arrival of more supplies in the form of filing boxes, another laptop, a tablet, and a stylus.

With that out of the way, I took the time to rub my hands together while taking in the work we needed to get done. “Now we’re talking business. Let’s learn what these naughty traffickers have been up to, shall we?”

The traffickers were complete and utter morons. According to neatly written notes at the top of each page, almost every property on the street had somehow been involved with the kidnapping of the kittens. One of the properties, marked as A2, had taken care of buying clothing for the kittens. A3 had taken care of buying the false identifications needed to get them onto the first of four flights. The documentation for the false identifications came with the name and contact information of the agents required for inputting the records into the system to give the identifications weight.

I made use of my contact list, called the FBI, and relayed all the information on the moles in the system, and due to the nature of the investigation, I requested angelic verification. The call ate two hours of my life as there were six agents involved with the scam—and every last one of the trafficked women had undergone a similar falsification process.

As the women needed their names and identities back, I spent a hefty chunk of time going through their papers to get their falsified passport numbers matched to their legitimate social security numbers, which I assumed the traffickers held hostage to keep them under their thumb.

The call ultimately involved five different people across four different government agencies, and I took notes in my journal to make certain I kept everything straight until I could get my notes imported into my new Devil-issued laptop. Once I hung up, I hissed, thought about swiping at the stack of papers involving the trafficked women, and held my temper.

“I have a whole new level of respect for the amount of bullshit you must put up with in your day-to-day life along with a better understanding why you have a criminal mischief hobby. How did you not lose your temper repeating the same shit over and over again?”

“They kept bringing new people into the call so I had to fill them in and relay the information again. By dealing with that then, we prevented even more bullshit later. What I just did should close off a keyhole for the traffickers—and possibly get more moles revealed as the corrupted agents will plea bargain for reduced sentences. If we play our end just right, the government will be cleaned out of those illegally accessing the social security and passport systems. That will make identifying traffickers much easier—or force them to use the legitimate passports of their victims. That can help catch the traffickers and set the victims free. You probably haven’t seen the signs in the airports, but they give decent guidelines on how to spot traditional traffickers right in the bathrooms nowadays. What these traffickers were doing? Smart and far more difficult to catch. If they rebuild, it will take them a great deal of time to do so. I’m also hoping the government will tighten down the social security and passport systems to better log when an employee creates an illegal record. The groundwork for that is now in place.”

I returned to the pile dedicated to the kittens, recording the locations items were purchased, when, and who had handled it, profiling each of the traffickers by their corresponding identification. “A6 seems to be the bastard generally in charge of the kittens, I think. He’s handling the immediate food purchases, giving us a nice paper trail of where he’s been going and how much he’s been feeding them. What I don’t understand is why he’s sending the receipts back to himself.” I pulled out one of the envelopes left in the pile, which had postmarks matching the newest of the receipts in the envelope. “Perhaps he’s getting compensation from the buyer of the kittens for all expenses? If we can find any fiscal records of compensation from the future buyer or a sponsor for the trafficking, this would be a damned good way to close out a buyer from the system. Closing the rings doesn’t eliminate those taking advantage of them, after all.”

“How do I handle if I have a list of people complicit in the murders of my fellow officers?” Easton asked, and he gestured to a small pile of documentation he’d pulled aside. “Some were paid to make certain the officers either died or left the force.”

“Do you want to handle it yourself?”

“I would.”

I reached over, snagged one of his papers, flipped it over, and wrote down the contact information for the appropriate departments within the FBI and CDC along with the names of some of my new contacts and my case identifier. “Inform the person who answers your call that you have information regarding the case I’ve listed here. Go to the salon if you need some privacy and come back here if you need additional information. I doubt you’ll have documents in other piles; I’m used to this sort of work, where the Devil would put some training wheels on your section so you can learn the ropes. He wants the job done right, so he’s going to give you the information in such a way you can handle. I’d take your entire stack with you because you may not realize you’ve been looking at good intel.”

Easton nodded, gathered his papers and notes, and headed to the salon for some privacy.

My heart hurt for him as I understood he would have to face the life and death of a woman he’d cherished.

My work took a toll, but it fell within my range of comfort.

His would change him, possibly completely.

Only time would tell.

I continued my search, pulled up a map of the United States, and charted where the kittens had gone prior to our cleaning the street of everything they had, including at least three hundred thousand dollars in cash. The kidnapping had started in Chicago, and the falsified passports indicated the kidnappers had planned to take the kittens several months prior to staging the hit. The name and address of the person who’d knocked at their door, along with a fifty thousand dollar payment to distract the parents while the kidnappers worked, would become a cornerstone of the case.

From Chicago, the traffickers had taken the kittens to Atlanta. After a short stay in Atlanta, likely pretending to go to the aquarium, the kittens had been relocated to Boston. The receipts for food ended in Boston, which had been sent by courier overnight, arriving at the property in the hours before our arrival and cleaning of the place.

According to the plane tickets, all had been purchased two days prior to the kidnapping on one itinerary, thus disguising it as a family trip.

Checking the flight number, I confirmed the flight into LaGuardia had safely landed while we had been busy cleaning house, which illuminated the Devil’s reasoning for not involving the NYPD.

Lucifer understood the kittens were somewhere in New York City, likely close to Manhattan.